Syria conflict: warplanes 'strike Damascus' - as it happened

• Video shows damage to 1st century Temple of Bel
• Shelling and warplane attacks across Damascus
• Syrian helicopter fires at house in Lebanon
•Read a summary of today's key events

Updated

An image taken from video obtained from Shaam News Network, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other Associated Press reporting, shows smoke from heavy shelling in the Jobar neighbourhood in north Damascus on 2 April. Syrian government warplanes were reported to have carried out air strikes on the capital on Wednesday morning. Photograph: Anonymous/AP

•Opposition activists reported shelling and warplane attacks across the suburbs of Damascus today. A Reuters reporter in the capital found a “new exodus” of residents fleeing the continued fighting there. A Syrian military commander has told rebels in Damascus that a continued attempt to advance in the capital would mean "certain death for them and their leaders". The Local Co-ordination Committees group also reported shelling in Aleppo and its surroundings, and in Daraa province. The group said 38 people had been killed in fighting across the country today, including 18 in Damascus. Its reports cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

•A Syrian helicopter travelled 12 miles into Lebanon and fired a missile into a house. There were no reported casualties. The Associated Press said the missile hit the house on the outskirts of Arsal, a town that has backed opposition fighters in Syria. Lebanon has maintained a policy of "dissociation" from the Syrian civil war, but with more and more Syrian refugees arriving in Lebanon the country has become divided between those who back the rebels and those who support Bashar al-Assad.

•The activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the opposition had taken an air defence base on the outskirts of Daraa, in the south west near the border with Jordan, after days of fighting. Its report cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

•An Assad supporter from Aleppo spoke to the Guardian about the arrival of the Free Syrian Army in the town, which she said resulted in kidnappings and the rise of Islamist fighters from the al-Nusra front. Her story cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

US

•American secretary of state John Kerry is travelling to Turkey and Israel this weekend to build on the two nations' efforts to repair ties, US and Turkish officials said today.

Libya

•Libya has formally applied to the International Criminal Court to be allowed to put Muammar Gaddafi's former spy chief on trial in Tripoli instead of sending him to the Hague to face justice, according to documents published today.

Egypt

• The Egyptian president's office is distancing itself from legal proceedings against a popular comedian questioned over accusations he insulted the president and Islam in his weekly TV show.

Syria

Mona Mahmood has been speaking to Dr Muhammed Tinary, the first elected head of the local council following the revolution in Sermeen, Idlib province, in north-western Syria. He explained the work of the council:

I established a field hospital for the rebels and civilians ... There were more than 35,000 people living in Sermeen city, and two years after the revolution there only 17,000 people left. They need a local council to organise their life and daily needs, distributing aid and the donations we get from relief agencies, Syrians in exile and the Syrian National Council, as well as providing fuel and security ...

We tried repeatedly to open schools, and we did – pupils and teachers were working regularly – but shooting by planes and artillery frightened the pupils and spread panic among them. We sent mediators to the military compounds surrounding the city asking for them to halt the shooting during school hours. The army said it could not guarantee the shooting would not happen during those times.

One of the main problems here is providing locals with bread. The Syrian regime has stopped providing these cities with wheat to keep bakeries working. We were able to buy wheat from Turkey and provide people with this basic foodstuff ...

We have a large number of unemployed, wounded and homeless, and we try to help them to survive by granting them food rations and some money. We try to secure medical treatment for the people who can't afford to go to hospitals or clinics. Those whose houses were levelled by the shooting, if we have money, we rent houses for them, or we set up tents to host them with their families, till we find a solution for them. If the house sustains minor damage, we help the family with money to fix it.

We have also formed a judiciary committee containing clerics, dignitaries and lawyers to impose security in the city and settle disputes among locals caused by loans or robberies ... We have a small prison for those sentenced by the committee. The longest sentence issued so far by the committee was imprisonment for three months ...

Day by day, the city is getting more organised and people feel much better that their city is restoring some sort of normal life.

His story cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

Syria/Lebanon

It was actually a Syrian helicopter, not a warplane, that attacked the house in Lebanon, Martin Chulov reports from Beirut.

This was the second time in the past month that a Syrian aircraft has entered Lebanese air space and fired a missile. No casualties were caused today, or last time, when the attack came from a fighter jet. And nor has there been any official reaction from the Lebanese government, whose foreign minister, Adnan Mansour is a staunch ally of the Assad regime.

The intrusion is being interpreted as being a message from Damascus that cross-border traffic of opposition fighters, or weapons, will not be tolerated. Today's attack struck near the town of Arsal, a Sunni enclave on the Syrian border, which is very close to the Hezbollah-stronghold of the northern Bekaa Valley.

While both weapons and fighters have crossed from this largely lawless territory, it is an insignificant supply line compared to Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, where gun-running has significantly stepped up since early January.

Arsal has been the scene of skirmishes between local residents who back the Syrian opposition and Lebanese soldiers and intelligence officers. Wadi Khaled, in the north of the country, is also seeing increasing spillover from the civil war.

Yesterday eight Syrian workers, all reportedly Alawites, were kidnapped in Wadi Khaled by the family members of a man detained by the regime inside Syria a year ago. This was the latest in a series of tit-for-tat kidnappings aimed at prisoner swaps that have inflamed tensions in the north and the Bekaa.

•Opposition activists reported shelling and warplane attacks across the suburbs of Damascus today. A Reuters reporter in the capital found a “new exodus” of residents fleeing the continued fighting there. A Syrian military commander has told rebels in Damascus that a continued attempt to advance in the capital would mean "certain death for them and their leaders". The Local Co-ordination Committees group also reported shelling in Aleppo and its surroundings, and in Daraa province. The group said 38 people had been killed in fighting across the country today, including 18 in Damascus. Its reports cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

•A Syrian jet travelled 12 miles into Lebanon and fired a missile into a house. There were no reported casualties. The Associated Press said the missile hit the house on the outskirts of Arsal, a town that has backed opposition fighters in Syria. Lebanon has maintained a policy of "dissociation" from the Syrian civil war, but with more and more Syrian refugees arriving in Lebanon the country has become divided between those who back the rebels and those who support Bashar al-Assad.

•The activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the opposition had taken an air defence base on the outskirts of Daraa, in the south west near the border with Jordan, after days of fighting. Its report cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

•An Assad supporter from Aleppo spoke to the Guardian about the arrival of the Free Syrian Army in the town, which she said resulted in kidnappings and the rise of Islamist fighters from the al-Nusra front. Her story cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

US

•American secretary of state John Kerry is travelling to Turkey and Israel this weekend to build on the two nations' efforts to repair ties, US and Turkish officials said today.

Libya

•Libya has formally applied to the International Criminal Court to be allowed to put Muammar Gaddafi's former spy chief on trial in Tripoli instead of sending him to the Hague to face justice, according to documents published today.

Egypt

• The Egyptian president's office is distancing itself from legal proceedings against a popular comedian questioned over accusations he insulted the president and Islam in his weekly TV show.

Reuters has filed a report from a journalist in Damascus, whose name has been withheld for security reasons.

The news agency’s reporter has found a “new exodus” of residents fleeing the capital as the fighting continues there.

Many Syrians in the capital had long asserted that the uprising-turned-civil war would not breach the city centre. Others insisted they would stay, no matter the consequences. But fear has begun to grip even the most resolute residents.

A businessman named as Ibrahim, who lives in the middle-class Rukn al-Din area, which has been attacked by mortar and rocket fire in recent weeks, is quoted as saying:

My wife barely likes to go away on holiday. And now, who would have thought we'd be packing to leave? God only knows when we'll be back.

His wife Lana said:

Things are only getting worse. Sometimes I hear the regime shells fly by our building on their way to the rebels. Then I sit and pray, thinking the retaliatory shelling is going to kill us. We have our 10-year-old daughter with us, and she's always afraid now. I can't take this any more. Maybe in a few months things will have calmed down here, and we can return. God knows.

The reporter spoke to another couple, Mayada and Yasser, who fled fighting on the outskirts to stay with parents in central Damascus, a move that has become typical. Yasser said:

When we got married, we promised each other we'd never move abroad for these reasons. But now, things are so bad our parents are begging us to leave.

Mayada added: “Our lives have been on hold for two years now. How long can we put up with this?”

Syria

A video obtained by Reuters suggests that Palmyra’s Temple of Bel, which dates from the first century, has been damaged in fighting between government and rebel forces.

The footage shows a large gap in one of the columns, which the news agency says was caused by a mortar bomb, and shrapnel chips in the colonnade.

The resident who filmed the footage, which was posted on YouTube in March, told Reuters: "The rebels are around the town. They hide in the desert, some to the east and some to the west." The groups attack government positions in the town at night, he said, and the government responds with mortar bombs, artillery shells and rockets. "For the past two months we have had shelling every night," he said. "The army have positioned themselves in the museum, between the town and the ruins."

The army has also entered the Roman theatre in the ancient city and positioned snipers behind its stone walls, he said.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the director of antiquities and museums at the Ministry of Culture, played down the impact of the conflict on the temple, saying the mortar attack caused “as much damage as a fire”. He said:

Matters are under control and as for damage to archaeological sites, there is nothing. The Syrian army is in some areas in the archaeological site and we oppose this. Our appeal goes to the Syrian government and all the parties to distance themselves from the site so it doesn't become a target for each side.

Palmyra in 2006. Photograph: Alamy

Reuters showed the video to Emma Cunliffe, a researcher from the University of Durham monitoring the effect of the war on Syria’s archaeological sites. She said the pattern of damage fitted that caused by government-owned weapons, but added it was impossible to be sure. She said:

It is very unclear what ordnance the rebels actually have access to; they have not hesitated to damage their heritage if it was necessary at other sites, or to utilise it knowing it will be drawn into the line of fire.

Palmyra, which is in central Syria near the modern town of Tadmur, is a Unesco world heritage site, and features the ruins of a city that was once one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world.

Libya

Libya has formally applied to the International Criminal Court to be allowed to put Muammar Gaddafi's former spy chief on trial in Tripoli instead of sending him to the Hague to face justice, according to documents published today.

Lawyers representing Libya argue that Abdullah al-Senoussi's home country is willing and able to prosecute him and therefore has precedence over the war crimes tribunal.

The ICC indicted Senoussi in June 2011 for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the Gaddafi regime's brutal attempts to put down the rebellion that eventually with western backing ousted the dictator.

Senoussi is in jail in Libya. His lawyers argue he will not get a fair trial at home and should be sent to the Hague.

Abdullah al-Senoussi, the former head of Libyan intelligence. Photograph: Dario Lopez-Mills/AP

The Associated Press has more on the Syrian jet firing a missile into Lebanon.

The agency says the missile hit a house on the outskirts of Arsal, a town near the border with Syria.

Arsal is a Sunni Muslim town that has backed opposition fighters in Syria, the news agency says, adding that arms smuggling into Syria is widespread in the area.

Meanwhile the activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that the opposition has taken an air defence base on the outskirts of Daraa, in the south west near the border with Jordan, after days of fighting. Their report cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

The Local Co-ordination Committees, a Syrian opposition group, is reporting further artillery shelling in the Ateibeh, Moudamiyeh, Jobar and Zamalka suburbs of Damascus, and a child killed by a warplane attack in the Marjeh neighbourhood.

Warplanes have also targeted the Mazereb and Tafas areas of the capital, the group says, and this video, uploaded today, purports to show warplanes attacking the Ghota area.

This video, uploaded today, purports to show children wounded in shelling in Mouadamieh in the capital’s suburbs.

And this video (WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE), also uploaded today, purports to show people carrying a seriously wounded man through the street in the Taiabieh area of the capital.

The LCCs also reports artillery shelling in Harbil, Aleppo province, and warplane attacks in Aleppo city and the villages of Aziza and Ain Asafeir

This video, uploaded today, purports to show damaged buildings in the Maisar neighbourhood of Aleppo.

The group also reports shelling in Daraa province, and the use of cluster bombs by warplanes in the town of Daeel there. This video, uploaded today, purports to show shelling by regime forces in Daraa.

The LCCs also reports shelling in Ghanto in Homs.

The group says 26 people have been killed in fighting so far today, 14 in Damascus and six in Aleppo.

Their reports and videos cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

A Syrian jet has flown 12 miles (20km) into Lebanon and fired a missile into a field near the border town of Arsal, witnesses have told Reuters. There were no casualties.

Lebanon has maintained a policy of "dissociation" from the Syrian civil war, but with more and more Syrian refugees arriving in Lebanon the country has become divided between those who back the rebels and those who support Bashar al-Assad.

This morning, before dawn, Lebanese gunmen who back the uprising against Assad fired on a convoy of trucks heading to Syria in the port city of Tripoli, wounding the driver, a security source told the news agency.

Egypt

The Egyptian president's office is distancing itself from legal proceedings against a popular comedian questioned over accusations he insulted the president and Islam in his weekly TV show, the Associated Press reports.

A statement late last night said Mohammed Morsi's administration recognised the "importance of freedom of expression and fully respects press freedom". The complaints against satirist Bassem Youssef, the statement pointed out, were filed by "citizens".

The case has led to criticisms that Egypt is sliding back into authoritarianism.

Syria

My colleague Mona Mahmood has been speaking via Skype to an Assad supporter named Dima Jamal, who is from Aleppo but now lives abroad. Aleppo, in Syria’s north west, has been the scene of fierce fighting and currently appears split between rebels and loyalists.

Jamal said it was the arrival in Aleppo of the Free Syrian Army that turned her against the rebels:

For many months, I was watching and trying to decide who was right and who was wrong, till the FSA entered Aleppo to destroy the city. They were able to access the city only through poor districts like Salah Aldeen, where most of the people are from Idlib city.

She talked about the influence of the Islamists of Jabhat al-Nusra, who have increasingly been leading the fight against Assad:

I chose to wear hijab a long time ago, but I never thought that one day a man would stop me to recommend that I should wear a veil. I was heading home after I finished my work and one of the fighters with a long beard stopped me to say: "Your hijab is not OK. You have to wear a veil." I could tell he was from Jabhat al-Nusra. That was too much. It was really terrifying to watch the fighters of the al-Nusra front touring Aleppo with their swords.

Since the FSA arrived in Aleppo, the number of women being kidnapped had increased, she claimed, something that eventually led to her leaving Syria.

One of my teachers’ colleagues was kidnapped; another woman who was with her husband heading home was stopped by armed gangsters on motorbikes and all her jewels were taken. Most of these kidnappers come from Izaz, in the countryside of Aleppo. I can't deny that some shabiha [pro-Assad militiamen] were involved in dirty acts too, but their presence was diminishing in our district.

At that time, some people in Aleppo, including my father, decided to keep a gun at home to protect the family, but with repeated incidents of kidnapping and killing, my father decided to send the family to a neighbouring country and stay alone at home.

Her father was subsequently kidnapped, accused of being one of the shabiha, and beaten, Jamal said. Jamal was phoned by the kidnappers, who had taken her father’s mobile phone, and was told that they were going to kill him.

After contacting all the people we know in Aleppo we were able to find someone who could reach the kidnappers and we convinced them to take a ransom instead. They agreed to take 55,000 Syrian pounds to release my father and take him back home to loot all our belongings. There were two cars in the garage; they wanted to take them, but it seemed that some of the FSA fighters who had the upper hand in the city told them that they could not take the cars and the revolution was not about looting.

Her father then came to join them abroad, she said. And she explained what she thought of the civil war.

I believe that this is a revolution for thugs who listen to themselves only. They have divided the Syrian people in two: pro- and anti-rebel. Most of the people I meet wish we did not have any revolution and had stayed living in peace. The Syrian army was made up of all the Syrian people; now most of the martyrs are Alawite.

If these rebels want to liberate Aleppo, they should attack the army compounds only. Why do they attack civilian districts? The al-Nusra front is planning in Aleppo and the FSA men are implementing the plans; this is the deal between them now.

All I wish now is that President Bashar and his soldiers would prevail and restore peace and security to Syria to enable all the Syrians who left their homes to get back.

Her story cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

Summary

Good morning and welcome to today’s Middle East live blog. Here are the headlines:

Syria

•The Local Co-ordination Committees, a Syrian opposition group, reported air strikes in the Damascus suburb of Mleha and artillery shelling in Daraa province and Homs province this morning. The group said 113 people were killed in the Syrian conflict yesterday, including 58 in the capital. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, another activist group, said 104 people had been killed in fighting across the country yesterday, 65 of them in Damascus and the surrounding area. These reports cannot be verified because most media are banned from Syria.

•Hundreds of Europeans have travelled to Syria since the start of the civil war to fight against President Bashar al-Assad, the most comprehensive study of European foreign fighters to date has found. A year-long survey by King's College of more than two hundred martyrdom posts on jihadist-linked websites and hundreds of Arab and western press reports found that up to 600 individuals from 14 countries including the UK, Austria, Spain, Sweden and Germany, have taken part in the conflict since it began in 2011. The largest contingent, the study found, came from the UK with estimates of fighters running between 28-134. But European fighters made up only between 7% and 11% of the foreign contingent in Syria, which ranged between 2,000 and 5,500 people – itself a relatively small number of combatants.

• The Israeli military said last night that its tanks had fired into Syria in response to shots fired from Syria at an Israeli army jeep in the Golan Heights, which is occupied by Israel, the New York Times reports.

•Israel has been accused of medical negligence by the Palestinian president and prime minister after the death of a prisoner from cancer, which triggered triggering clashes in the West Bank and protests by Palestinian inmates in at least four Israeli jails.

Tunisia

•There will be no "Islamisation" of post-revolutionary Tunisia and the Islamist-led government has no hidden agendas or intention to monopolise power, the country's new prime minister has told my colleague Seumas Milne in Tunis.

Egypt, Tunisia and Libya

The Arab Spring gave the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates the chance to play vital roles in the Egyptian, Tunisian and Libyan revolutions. But now the organisation has itself become the target of violent protests. So, who are these men and how did they get where they are, asks Patrick Kingsley.